Hello and welcome to easyJet's half-year results presentation for the period ending 31 March 2025. In H1, we delivered a slight improvement in winter losses, once adjusted for the timing of Easter. We had a strong start to the year, delivering a GBP 65 million improvement year-on-year in the first quarter, demonstrating the progress we are making on reducing our losses with the ultimate goal of profitability in this quarter. During the March quarter, which is challenging for all airlines, we took actions to structurally improve crew productivity and aircraft utilization, delivered by the important capacity investment we made. This resulted in ASKs increasing by 14% in the quarter, with the revenue benefits from this investment expected to mature next winter and beyond. Looking ahead to the summer, capacity is more constrained, with seats growth expected to be circa 1%.
We're seeing positive demand for our flights and holidays, with sold load factors ahead in both Q3 and Q4 year-on-year, demonstrating that consumers continue to prioritize travel, and we expect attractive earnings growth, building on the record summer 2024 performance. easyJet Holidays is continuing its excellent trajectory and is on track to deliver circa 25% customer growth year-on-year, whilst maintaining our industry-leading margins. This financial year, we've taken nine A320neo family aircraft into ownership. The book value of our owned assets is now GBP 4.6 billion, and we expect this value to grow more than 60% by full year 2028. easyJet continues to be the number one ESG-rated airline in Europe by Sustainalytics, CDP, and MSCI. We also retained our position in FTSE for good for a second year running.
All of this together means we continue to be on track to deliver our medium-term target of sustainably generating over GBP 1 billion in profit before tax. I remain focused on the significant opportunities ahead of us and firmly believe that we are well positioned to capture these. Our target to achieve group profit before tax of between GBP 7-10 per seat will be delivered through four key areas. First, reducing winter losses. We're focused on making the December quarter profitable, coupled with minimizing losses in the seasonally challenging March quarter, which is always an important period of operational preparation ahead of the peak summer. Second, upgauging. We have a unique opportunity to increase the average number of seats per aircraft from 181 to 191 in full year 2028. This opportunity would deliver over GBP 3 per seat in savings, whilst increasing our owned asset value by more than 60%.
Third, easyJet Holidays. I'm very pleased with the continued growth of the holidays business, and with a current attachment rate of 6.4% on easyJet seats, excluding domestic flights, substantial growth opportunities still remain. Lastly, we're making continuous improvements across the business, but I'm particularly focused on three areas: enhancing customer loyalty by continuously improving our network, digital experience, and customer service delivered by our fantastic people, both in the sky and on the ground; optimizing revenue generation; and continuing to drive efficiencies within our cost base. In addition, I remain absolutely focused on capital allocation, with the aim to deliver high-teen ROIC on the assets we deploy. I will now hand over to Jan, who will take you through our financials.
Thanks, Kenton. I'm pleased to present the half-year financial review for the first time since joining easyJet as CFO in January this year. Let's start with the H1 2025 financial summary. The group's loss before tax was GBP 394 million, a slight improvement year-on-year when adjusted for the timing of Easter. This winter capacity investment of 12% ASK growth, which includes growth into longer leisure alongside restoration of capacity on some city flows, has further enhanced productivity and utilization of our assets throughout the winter, as well as driving an increase in total revenue. In Q1, we more than halved losses, which was a GBP 65 million reduction, representing a GBP 53 million PBT improvement in the airline and a GBP 12 million PBT improvement in holidays. This is a positive step towards our goal to achieve profitability in the December quarter.
In Q2, underlying losses increased, driven by the more pronounced increase in ASK's of 13% into many new destinations, which have naturally required stimulation in the seasonally weaker Q2. The strategic capacity investment supported the strong cost performance, and we expect to see revenue benefits from route maturity this coming winter and beyond as capacity growth normalizes. On a reported basis, the group headline loss before tax increased year-on-year by GBP 44 million. Following the closeout of April, we saw strong financial performance reflecting the shift in Easter this year, worth approximately GBP 50 million. We continue to hold a strong balance sheet. At the end of the first half, our net cash position was GBP 327 million. This compares to GBP 146 million at the same moment last year.
These movements include circa GBP 1 billion in CapEx, which encompasses final delivery payments of 50 new NEO aircraft over the last 12 months, of which eight were delivered in the last six months. Our owned assets have increased by over GBP 500 million to a book value of GBP 4.6 billion. Our bookings to date remain supportive of consensus, which would result in attractive year-on-year earnings growth. However, we remain mindful that there is still an important booking period for the peak summer to go. Our capacity guidance remains unchanged for the full year. We expect full year seats to increase by approximately 3% year-on-year and ASKs by approximately 8%. Summer capacity growth is constrained across our network, and we expect approximately 1% increase in seats in half two, which is considerably lower than the growth in half one, and especially the second quarter.
From a cost control perspective, full year total CASK is projected to reduce low single digits year-on-year. Full year CASK ex-fuel is targeted to be broadly flat year-on-year. Full year fuel CASK is expected to reduce 8% based on recent fuel trends and current hedge position. Looking to this summer, we're now 80% sold for Q3, which is 0.5 percentage points ahead of this time last year. For Q4, we are 42% sold, 2.2 percentage points ahead of year-on-year. While we continue to see an uncertain environment, easyJet is currently benefiting from fuel and fixed tailwinds. We remain happy with the load factor built for this summer. However, as always at this point in year, there is still a long way to go. easyJet Holidays continues to expect roughly 25% growth in customers, keeping us on track for early delivery of the medium-term target of GBP 250 million profit before tax.
We are currently 77% sold for the second half. Turning to the performance indicators, we have increased ASKs by 12% year-on-year as we focus on driving benefits through increased productivity and utilization. We have increased our fleet by 3% to 355 aircraft this winter, utilizing these aircraft on average nine hours per day, which is a 5% increase year-on-year. Thanks to the fleet modernization program, the average number of seats on board each aircraft increased by 1% to 181, which is expected to further grow to 191 by full year 2028. As we have increased capacity into longer leisure destinations, the sector length grew by 6%. Beach and non-European routes now account for 49% of total ASKs, which is a 5 percentage point increase year-on-year.
While we have seen the biggest growth into longer leisure destinations on beach and non-EU, we have also continued to grow into city destinations, restoring capacity and developing our Christmas market proposition. Domestic capacity slightly reduced, and we saw route maturity on these domestics following prior winter capacity investments. Moving on to airline revenue, demand for our primary airport network has continued to grow. We carried 8% more passengers year-on-year, with a load factor of 88%, improving by 1.2 percentage points year-on-year. Total airline revenue increased by 6% in line with seat capacity. However, total RASK was 6% lower, with yields impacted by Easter timing and important capacity investment, which naturally required some stimulation. 12% of the overall capacity in H1 was for routes that were launched less than two years ago.
Historically, new routes take around three years to fully mature, so we have a significant proportion of the network that we would expect to benefit from revenue uplift in the coming winter as these new routes mature and capacity growth normalizes. Looking ahead to the next winter, we will return to normalized levels of growth, which will include year-rounding operations at new bases alongside target capacity growth, such as continued investment on non-European fuels. Now let's move on to the CASK bridge. We saw strong cost performance in the first half, with total CASK reducing 5% year-on-year. Our CASK ex-fuel has improved by 4%, with all cost line items either improving year-on-year or remaining broadly flat. This performance has been driven by continued focus on efficiencies, particularly within asset utilization, which has increased by 5%, and crew productivity, which saw a 6% improvement year-on-year.
These efficiencies have more than offset the general inflationary pressures that all airlines are currently facing. Fuel CASK improved by 8% thanks to fuel efficiencies from our continued fleet modernization and favorable effective US dollar and jet fuel prices. These positive factors more than mitigate the impact of ETS allowances being phased out and the introduction of SAF mandates. Looking to the full year, we are focused on keeping CASK ex-fuel broadly flat. Our focus on performance generally and on realizing cost efficiency specifically will continue as it remains firmly in our low-cost DNA. Included in the appendix is a slide which provides further detail by line item on the drivers of cost development in the first half and our expectations for the second half of this financial year.
Based on our current hedge positions and spot rates, H2 fuel CASK is expected to improve by approximately 8% year-on-year. I'm pleased to be inheriting the work that Kenton and the team have done over recent periods in controlling costs. Having been here now for four months, I firmly believe there are further opportunities to drive even greater efficiencies at easyJet, building on our low-cost DNA. Opportunities will mainly sit around further increasing asset productivity generally, continuing to optimize the capital allocation between bases and routes, leveraging our strong position in different markets with suppliers, and benefiting from the digital investments we are making to increase efficiencies of the organization. Moving on to easyJet Holidays. easyJet Holidays has continued its profitable growth trajectory, with profits increasing by 42% to GBP 44 million in the first half of the year.
The number of customers has grown by 27%, improving the attachment rates to 6%, a 1 percentage point increase year-on-year. The average selling price for winter holidays has slightly increased to GBP 578, offering great value. Notably, 75% of our customers opted to book four or five-star hotel, demonstrating the quality and value of our offering. Looking ahead to the full year, we are on track to achieve a circa 25% increase in customers, which will expand our U.K. market share to approximately 9%. Moving on to the balance sheet, easyJet continues to maintain one of the best investment-grade credit ratings in the industry. Standard & Poor's rates us a triple B with a positive outlook, and Moody's rates us a Baa2 with a stable outlook, which is unchanged versus previous update.
You can see the increase within property, plant, and equipment to GBP 4.6 billion, driven by an increase in fleet size to 355 aircraft, up from 343 aircraft this time last year. The net book value of owned assets is set to grow by more than 60% by 2028. Our cash position has strengthened by GBP 290 million, taking our cash to GBP 3.6 billion. At the end of the half year, our net cash position includes lease, including leases, was GBP 327 million. If you remove the IFRS 16 lease liabilities, our net cash position would stand at GBP 1.5 billion. Our current liquidity balance stands at GBP 5.3 billion, which is GBP 1.8 billion in excess of our policy to hold liquidity to the value of unearned revenues plus GBP 500 million. This excess de-risks future capital expenditure, prefunding a significant portion of this. We have seen an increase in our IFRS 16 lease liabilities.
This reflects our actions taken to extend leases of aging aircraft to mitigate the delay in delivery of aircraft from Airbus. This is not only increasing lease liabilities, but also maintenance costs and allows us to further deliver our planned fleet growth. Our fleet is made up of Airbus 320 family aircraft, all powered by CFM engines. We have an order book to 2034, comprising an additional 291 A320neo family aircraft, plus a further 100 purchase rights. These deliveries will drive our upgauging journey, enhancing cost efficiencies as we move from our current average goal of 181 into the low 190s by 2028 and further to the low 200s by 2033. We have received all nine aircraft scheduled deliveries into the current financial year ahead of our summer operations. The future delivery schedule remains aligned with our guidance in November.
We continue to work with Airbus to mitigate the impact of previously notified delays in deliveries due to the supply constraints seen at both OEMs. All aircraft scheduled for delivery in full year 2026 are expected to be taken directly into ownership. This will take our NEO ownership percentage to 87%. We expect a rise in our gross CapEx over the coming years, driven by increasing aircraft deliveries as we retire the A319 aircraft. The CapEx increase is also driven by a step up in fleet delivery payments in line with our delivery profile, an increased investment into spares to ensure operational readiness, as well as growing maintenance costs as our fleet expands. It's important to note that the gross CapEx doesn't account for any potential financing options available to us.
Currently, 82% of our NEOs are owned and in line with our capital allocation framework, we aim to maintain NEO ownership at over 75%. We currently expect elevated levels of deliveries over the coming years thanks to the fleet modernization program. This will take us to a fleet of 395 aircraft in full year 2028. At this base level, we would need 17 aircraft a year at steady state to renew the fleet with an expected useful life of 23 years. This would give a gross CapEx of GBP 1.5 billion, which is the cash we generated last year excluding CapEx. We also have flexibility in the financing to reduce our CapEx down. It is noted that this is GBP 0.2 billion lower than full year 2026, where we expect 17 aircraft deliveries as next year also includes elevated pre-delivery payments.
Alongside this, we are looking to drive increased earnings and cash generation, which we believe will deliver attractive true cycle free cash flows. Moving on to the unique opportunity ahead of us from upgauging via the fleet modernization, a key component of our medium-term target. By replacing our A319 subfleet with a more efficient A320neo aircraft, we are set to structurally improve our returns. The majority of the margin enhancements from the upgauging lies ahead, with material cost benefits expected to be realized from 2026 onwards. Utilizing real data from our current fleet mix, we know that for every 319 that leaves the fleet, we will see circa GBP 10 cost per seat benefit if replaced by an A320neo. If replaced by an A321, the benefit increases to circa GBP 16, which is unchanged from the last update.
At a group level, this will deliver greater than GBP 3 of unit cost savings and remains one of the critical pillars to achieving our medium-term targets. This is a unique journey for easyJet as we retire the 82 remaining A319s, which have not just 156 seats. Now I will hand back to Kenton.
I'm confident that we have the right strategy in place and we're well positioned to deliver attractive shareholder returns. I want to reiterate our commitment to making low-cost travel easy with our strategy built around four key pillars: building Europe's best network, strengthening our revenue, delivering ease and reliability, and driving our low-cost model. Everything we do is informed by this strategy, and executing against these four key pillars will enable us to achieve our medium-term targets. None of this can be delivered without the continual commitment of our people.
Over the past six months, I've really enjoyed spending so much time with our dedicated, passionate, and hardworking colleagues across the network. I've been able to see for myself the extent to which our people are a key differentiator for easyJet and consistently go above and beyond for our customers. They are central to the customer experience and are therefore essential to our success. Once again, both easyJet and easyJet Holidays have been recognized as best places to work by Glassdoor and the Sunday Times, respectively. This is a fantastic achievement and reflects our ongoing commitment to our people. We have again invested in performance shares for all of our people, allowing everyone to share in easyJet's success. Together, these measures help retain talent and ensure employees are invested in the success of easyJet so we can all achieve our full potential together.
Our primary focus is on generating the highest returns from the assets that we deploy, our aircraft. We achieve this by allocating aircraft to our highest performing bases and routes whilst maintaining an optimal network. I'm also focused on driving revenue generation from our existing assets. This is being achieved through leveraging the asset-light model of easyJet Holidays, enhancing revenue management in the airline, and continually growing ancillaries. In addition, we continue to invest in new aircraft over the coming years to deliver on our growth targets. This includes increasing frequencies and adding new network points, along with taking advantage of strategic opportunities as they come up, for example, the new slots in Rome and Milan and Orly. Upgauging also presents a unique opportunity for easyJet, principally driven by the retirement of the A319 subfleet, bringing cost and sustainability benefits through reduced fuel consumption and lower noise.
With the introduction of new aircraft, our unit cost of ownership will remain broadly flat thanks to favorable pricing agreements with Airbus and because new aircraft do not have their engine shop visits capitalized until they're incurred. The reduced OEM deliveries throughout Europe are leading to a more constrained capacity environment, which is seen in the seat growth we expect this summer. We are, however, continuing to add targeted growth across our network, increasing capacity onto longer leisure, continuing to restore city flows, and consolidating some domestics. I want to touch on some of the key developments across the network. Southend, which we opened for summer 2025 last month, is performing well, delivering load factors ahead of the network average, underpinned by strong demand for easyJet Holidays, which currently accounts for 25% of bookings.
Our new bases at Milan Linate and Rome Fiumicino not only mark a strategic milestone but are great growth opportunities. This summer will be the first time in easyJet's history that we've based aircraft in Linate. This year, we've also added aircraft into high-performing bases like Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Paris Orly, Palma, and Basel, alongside launching over 200 new routes. Looking ahead, we're excited to announce the launch of a new base in Newcastle for summer 2026, offering consumers an even greater choice of flights and holidays. When we're not getting the required returns, we have the flexibility to adapt and will act decisively, as we did by reallocating capacity from underperforming bases in Toulouse and Venice. During the winter, we added meaningful volume to our network. ASKs grew by 12%, underpinned by 6% growth in seat capacity and a 6% increase in sector length.
This was driven by a deliberate investment in longer leisure markets, including North Africa, Canary Islands, and Cape Verde. These investments are expected to deliver route maturity benefits this coming winter and beyond, which is consistent with what we've seen when launching new routes previously. In summary, we continue to focus on capital allocation, optimizing our network to ensure capacity is deployed in the markets where we see the strongest demand and returns. This slide spotlights the digital improvement program we have in place, which focuses on upgrading the products and services our customers want while also enhancing our algorithms for better performance. We're pleased to now have full ownership of our re-platform industry-leading app. This provides us with complete control over its development so we can further enhance its capabilities at speed, and we adopt a more app-centric approach to improve the customer journey.
We continue to grow in-flight retail, advancing towards our goal of generating GBP 1 per profit per seat from this area of the business. Moving on to easyJet Holidays, which has a digitally delivered proposition and low overheads. Currently, 75% of our bookings are to four and five-star hotels, and we have impressive customer satisfaction scores of 84% as a result of our strong focus on delivering an exceptional service. It is worth reiterating here that with only 6.4% attachment rate, there remains significant opportunity for further expansion. In addition to naturally increasing the attachment rate on city and beach breaks, we are also expanding awareness of attracting new customers via other channels, such as our new partnership with Tesco Clubcard, where we have become the exclusive large provider of package holidays to Clubcard members. This gives us exposure to 23 million households across the U.K.
This winter, we also launched new destinations such as Cape Verde and Luxor, and we're confident about our continued growth on both beach and city flows. Our purpose is to make low-cost travel easy, offering attractive fares to popular destinations delivered with a great customer experience. I'm pleased to say that we saw a further improvement in our customer satisfaction scores, which increased by 1.5 percentage points to 82%, with improvements across all touch points of the customer journey. The most significant improvements were within airport scores, which is as a result of our renewed efforts to provide targeted support on the ground at our airports. We pride ourselves on providing the warmest welcome in the sky and have recently extended this focus to include the on-the-ground experience for our customers.
Initiatives such as increasing ground support staff have already been received positively by our customers, and we're looking forward to further positive feedback as we go into the peak summer season. In addition, we remain focused on controlling the controllables. Following challenges with air traffic control last summer, we've continued to invest in building resilience in our network. This includes a core focus on our on-time performance and ensuring aircraft turn times are met regardless of external delays in order to further reduce disruptive events. Benefits are already being seen with an OTP improvement of one percentage point in the half year, despite the poor ATC performance continuing, and a huge 13% point improvement in the busiest four days over the Easter Bank holiday. We're also continuously improving data, AI, and automation to provide a better service to our customers.
An example of this is through the use of SkySIM, which allowed us to simulate and stress test our network before the peak season, identifying and proactively mitigating potential pinch points early, as well as the on-the-day efficiencies. We're also using data and AI to support with crew planning, which is crucial for both flight reliability and providing our people with roster stability so they know where and when they'll be flying. In addition, we're committed to enhancing customer communication, equipping our ground staff with real-time information, which enables them to provide up-to-date and accurate information to our customers. Our new app also features a live activity function, including a home screen widget that provides passengers with real-time updates on gate information and other relevant details for their journey. All of this together demonstrates our commitment to continually improving every aspect of the customer experience.
Our 4% reduction in CASK ex-fuel during the first half of the year was driven by a 6% improvement in crew productivity and a 5% increase in aircraft utilization from capacity investments into longer leisure. We expect CASK ex-fuel to be broadly flat for the full year, resulting in a 24-month period of stable unit costs. Going forward, we continue to benefit from insourcing all of our line maintenance across our network and the acquisition of our first MRO facility in Malta last year, which will allow us to insource up to 25% of easyJet's heavy-based maintenance requirements. However, it's important to note that there's still more to be done. Nearly all of the upgauging benefits lie ahead of us, with circa GBP 3 per seat savings from upgauging yet to be realized.
In addition, we're continuing to use data to drive efficiency as well as other productivity initiatives, which we look forward to talking about in due course. As you can see, our competitive advantage over flag carriers remains, and while our costs have reduced in the first half, the same is not true for most other airlines. In summary, the near-term outlook for easyJet is positive, with our current book position supportive of consensus expectations, which will deliver another positive step forward towards our medium-term profit target. However, I remain mindful that, as always at this point in the year, there's an important booking period for the peak summer to go. We're focused on executing on our strategy, supported by a disciplined approach to capital allocation, focusing on deploying our capital where we can deliver a high-team rookie. We're doing all of this from a position of strength.
We have an investment-grade balance sheet, one of the best in the industry. The percentage of Neos in ownership is currently at 82%, and the book value of owned assets is GBP 4.6 billion. We expect this to grow more than 60% by full year 2028. In addition, we paid our annual dividend of 20% of the full year profit after tax to shareholders in March. All of this means we're well positioned to deliver our medium-term targets, providing us with the building blocks to achieve sustainable profit before tax of greater than GBP 1 billion. There is still so much more to go for, and I remain confident in easyJet's prospects for this year and excited for the future. Thank you for watching this presentation of easyJet's half-year 2025 financial results.